Meet the Introverted Extroverts of Ribeira Sacra

For a region as ancient as Ribeira Sacra, it may seem odd that we don’t know a lot about the wine.

It was the ancient Romans who first carved terraces into the perilously steep hills that rise from the rivers in eastern Galicia in northwest Spain. Paradoxically, the wine available today is a relatively recent phenomenon. Ribeira Sacra wines are modern interpretations, produced by winemakers who are still learning the intricacies of the land and how it is expressed through the mencía grape.

Here at Wine School, we welcome opportunities to discover wine regions as they are still discovering themselves. Ribeira Sacra, like so many other Spanish regions, provides a great opportunity to examine the merger of ancient and modern. And it offers a chance to explore the qualities of the mencía grape, which, because of the potential it has displayed in Ribeira Sacra and the neighboring region of Bierzo, is becoming increasingly popular in other parts of Spain as well as in the Dão region of Portugal.

You know how we operate: I recommend three good examples of a particular wine each month. You drink one or as many as you would like at home, in a relaxed atmosphere with food, family or friends, noting your own reactions to the wine. Then we gather to discuss. As always, I welcome hearing your thoughts.

The three wines I recommended were the Décima Ribeira Sacra 2014, the Guímaro Ribeira Sacra Tinto 2015 and the D. Ventura Ribeira Sacra Viña Caneiro 2012.

Although these wines are fairly similar, they are made with different intents. Aside from being the youngest among these three bottles, the Tinto is Guímaro’s entry-level wine, meant to be consumed young.

By contrast, the Viña Caneiro is D. Ventura’s best cuvée and the oldest of the bottles. It’s a more serious wine than the Tinto, and though it’s nearly five years old and mature, it would be interesting to sip again in another five years.

The third wine, the 2014 Décima, is a bit more mysterious. I don’t know much about the producer, but I really like the wine. It comes from the Amandi subzone of Ribeira Sacra, as does the Viña Caneiro.

Amandi is one of the region’s best areas, where the steep terraces rising from the Sil River are studded with chunks of slate, the dominant rock in the soil. Everything must be done by hand, as the hills are too steep to accommodate machines.

The Guímaro is aged briefly in steel tanks before it is bottled, a technique intended to preserve its fresh fruity flavors. Indeed, it was almost exotically fruity and floral in the glass, with bright raspberry and mineral flavors that linger in the mouth. Despite the exotic flavor, as with so many Ribeira Sacra reds, it was graceful and restrained, drawing you in rather than throwing itself at you.

Wild, exotic aromas of fruits and flowers are characteristic of mencía grown in Ribeira Sacra, as are the underlying earthy mineral flavors and grace. I love this combination, which I often prefer to the denser, more burly mencías of Bierzo. And I wonder how a wine can be simultaneously exuberant and reticent.

I found these qualities, too, in the 2014 Décima, as bright, lively, exotic and lithe as the Guímaro, but with fine tannins that gave a little more structure to the wine. It, too, had the blend of raspberry and slatelike minerality among its flavors, and it was also aged in steel tanks.

reader perspectives

Eric Asimov, The New York Times wine critic, is talking about Ribeira Sacra this month. Ifyou would like to join the conversation, try one of the bottleslisted here and as you try them, ask yourself these questions.

Aromas

Are the wines fragrant? Or reticent?

Flavors

Animal, vegetable or mineral? Categorize and explain, using one or more of these terms.

Textures

How did the wine feel in the mouth?

respond

The 2012 Viña Caneiro was the outlier among these three bottles, possibly because of its age. Like the Guímaro, it was aged in steel tanks, but for nine months rather than six. Did this longer aging contribute to its added depth and richness? Or was that a product of the vintage? Probably a little of both. In any case, the Viña Caneiro was richer and deeper, with herbal flavors to complement the red fruit and mineral components.

I liked them all, especially with a splayed roast chicken that I cooked with a favorite recipe from my colleague Melissa Clark.

Despite the differences among these wines, they were easy, accessible and delightful in a way that more ambitious wines may not be. Had these wines been aged in oak barrels for longer periods of time, they may not have been as easy to enjoy in their early years. If the oak barrels were new, the wines could have been marred by woody flavors — although with a judicious use of older barrels, perhaps they would have aged and evolved in fascinating ways.

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Guímaro makes several cuvées from small plots of old vines that are aged in barrels and would offer more complexity. So does Dominio do Bibei, another producer from a different subzone of Ribeira Sacra. Those would be great wines for following up this small sample, as would the wines of Bierzo.

The reaction to these Ribeira Sacras was mixed, which was surprising to me, as I find them so pleasurable. Many of you enjoyed them. VSB of San Francisco had never heard of Ribeira Sacra. When he bought a bottle of the Guímaro, the seller described it as half-pinot noir, half-syrah, which VSB said was a good description.

A reader in Northport, Mich., Mario Batali, who happens to be a chef of some renown, said he drank the Décima with white-bean-and-venison chili, and called it “a match made in heaven.”

Photo

Credit
Serge Bloch

“The light mouthfeel was nearly bursting with freshness, which played well with the toasted serrano chile salsa I spooned over as a condiment,” he said. “And the ephemeral structure of the tannins allowed the sweetness of the cornbread served alongside to be a real player in the quartet.”

Though he couldn’t find any of the recommended bottles in Poland, Dawid in Warsaw did manage to track down a bottle from another producer, which he said went well with spicy burgers, guacamole and sweet onions. And Roland in Portland, Ore., found an older vintage of the Viña Caneiro, a 2008, which he said was the boldest and deepest of the wines he tried. That response partly answered my question of what the wine would taste like in five years.

Not everybody’s experience was as harmonious. Caroline of Eugene, Ore., said her group found that they were “pleasant and reasonable,” and that they paired well with chicken Marbella and other dishes. But the bottom line? “The wines didn’t knock anybody out.”

And poor Dan Barron of New York found little to like in his combinations of the Guímaro and skirt steak with almond sauce, and the Viña Caneiro with flank steak and tapenade. My recommendation would have been to keep those dishes simple and cut out the sauces. But, he said, he and his wife did enjoy the Décima with salmon in a soy-lime sauce.

For all of us, these wines were an adventure, complete with delight in discovery and disappointment when they didn’t match our hopes. For me, they are one more option when the occasion calls for nuance rather than power. I hope they at least inspire further exploration.

As an aside, the name Ribeira Sacra can be translated as Sacred Riverbanks. That name, the story goes, came about not because the riverbanks themselves were deemed holy or blessed, but because so many monasteries and churches dotted the region. I like to imagine that the name was coined with some irony in mind, even if the breathtaking views of the vineyards do inspire awe.